X-Message-Number: 24619 References: <> From: Peter Merel <> Subject: Oil Crisis: Cryonics Orgs Leave US Now! Date: Sun, 12 Sep 2004 11:18:28 +1000 Catching up on cryonet, I see Mark Plus's alarms that oil shortages may inhibit civilian travel in the US. Granted it should cost 3 times as much to fly now than it does, if oil were priced realistically. But a few thousand extra in a life-threatening emergency won't trouble non-US-resident cryonicists yet. It may be, however, with changing supply and demand, oil will cost 10 times as much in 10 years. US infrastructure is totally oil dependent. The US can't afford those prices even printing petrodollars. If the present administration is returned, equivalent hydrogen infrastructure won't be installed in time. In a real crunch the US could collapse into squalor and depression ... Except we Americans are belligerent and ruthless, armed to the teeth, certain of our manifest destiny. We'll mount an invasion on oil-producing lands to make last year's interference in Iraq seem like charity. We'll annex Venezuela by land and the whole middle east using Iraq and Israel as bases. We'll let "deputy" Australia do the same in Timor while puppet Britain runs interference with the EU. It'd be a war of liberation in the neocon mode, but bigger. We'll prop up brutal dictators in all target nations, mount media campaigns against 'em, then the mines get laid, the bombs dropped, the innocents slaughtered, and Halliburton wins no-contest reconstruction contracts. Everybody happy ... Except for the domestic element of the neocon agenda. With the return of indentured slavery - the necessary draft of the poor - all manner of civil liberties must be curtailed. Justified by Orwellian wars against terror, drugs, and medical/social preferences, enforced by a one-party judiciary, cheered on by monopolized media, all the dissenters and oddballs will get rounded up and tossed to the ever growing network of American gulags. Now, you don't think transhumanists are oddballs? Don't you think that just registering your email address with cryonet red-flagged you on a Total Information Awareness watchlist? The FBI is now visiting people just because they wear anti-Bush T-shirts. The Secret Service is manhandling protesters into "free speech zones". Freedom of travel is restricted for outspoken liberals - even liberal senators. You think they're not watching your every move too? What good your proximity to a cryonics facility when you're imprisoned in a 6x8 oubliette? Unless Kerry wins, it's time for transhumanists to make plans to get the hell out of the US before the boom comes down. Where to go? Well, if things pan out like this, the whole Northern Hemisphere is going to hell. So head south. Most cryonicists have sufficient skills and money to qualify for immigration to Australia. The trouble is there are no orgs here. Sympathetic legislators, social stability, diversified media, minimal religious fundamentalism, no threat of war, lots of room ... but no orgs yet. A few Australians have made noises about starting orgs in the lucky country, but they none seem real yet. It would make more sense for the existing orgs - Alcor, CI, Venturists, Extropians, and the rest - to pool forces and move here en masse. Beautiful land is cheap just outside most major cities. Tweed shire, it seems to this Tweed resident, would be an optimal choice. "The secret of a long life is knowing when it's time to go" -- Michelle Shocked. Peter Merel. Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=24619